Skoll World Forum 2012

“In 40 years there will be more people in Africa than in Europe and the Americas…the future depends on when Africa will get out of poverty and have 2-child families.”

- Hans Rosling (Co-Founder of the Gapminder Foundation)

Andy, Antoine and I traveled to Oxford, England last week for the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. We thought Skoll 2011 was great, but this year it was unbelievable. In addition to catching up with many partners and friends and forging some powerful new friendships, we were blown away by Hans Rosling's presentation during the Opening Plenary. Using toilet paper roles and computer graphic animations (his "beloved bubble graphs"), Rosling described population change among various countries. He highlighted that even if Africa has 2 children per woman today, the population will still double. Generations of smaller families are crucial to curbing population growth. You can view Rosling's full presentation here (skip to 23:00 mins).

Check out Rosling's organization, Gapminder, and the database of statistics on world trends and indicators. We find particularly interesting the visuals below, which compare fertility rates to life expectancy over the past 200 years. Notice how Sub Saharan African countries tend to lag behind the rest of the world's progression to smaller families and longer lives.